Monday, June 25, 2007

Deplasticize Your Life

Greetings. I've had to take a hiatus from this blog due to a lot of demanding projects. I'm not sure how often I will be able to post for the next 6 months but I'll try to find something interesting at least once a month. The war against plastic bags has gotten to a whole new level in the last year and I just can't keep up with all the articles and activity. But this is a good thing!

Here's something from my favorite blogger, Sharon Astyk, on deplasticizing your life. I'm including more of the article than I usually do, and I really encourge you to go direct to her site and read the whole thing, plus her other posts. She and Miranda from Simple Living have got a really cool project going called "90% Emissions Reduction" or "The Riot for Austerity". You can read more about my participation in it on my Truffula Tuft Blog

If you didn't see the article on plastic oceans (the one with the horrible turtle pictures), you should definitely read it here - this is really important.

Because we all knew that plastic never breaks down entirely, but I don't think everyone realized that what happens is that plastic fragments and mixes in with your water, your soil, your food, and the food and water of plants and animals, and then it makes its way into our bodies. How is a really troubling and scary story. Definitely read the article.

Now this is stuff never, ever meant to be ingested - full of endocrine disrupters (messes with your hormones), carcinogens (warm plastic mixed with liquid creates dioxin among other things), traces benzene (liver cancer) and all sorts of things that no one ever meant for us to eat, breathe and bathe in. Now this plastic warms the planet a couple of times - when it is manufactured from oil, when it is recycled (if it is, most isn't - more on this in a minute), and when it goes into a landfill and helps mix with organic garbage to produce methane. And since cancer treatment isn't exactly low input, you could argue that it warms the planet again - when we have our surgeries and other treatments from the illnesses caused by becoming a plastic world.

The plastics industry has spent a long time convincing us that plastics are recyclable - they have those nice arrows, so they must be ok, right? But in fact only a few varieties of plastic are recyclable, plastic recycling is quite energy intensive, and after you recycle that plastic container into a bumper or recycled plastic lumber, that's it - next stop is the landfill or your water table.

So what do we do about this? The first thing is to buy no new plastic, or as little as humanly possible. Don't take that plastic bag at the grocery store - when you do so, you are saying "make another." Don't buy things packaged in plastic if you can avoid it - and tell your store manager "I'd really like to purchase that - but not with all that plastic packaging." Whenever possible, buy things with no or minimal packaging, or that uses recycled glass, metal or paper only. The only way to stop the plastic plague is stop making a market for it....

photo from Mindfully.org The remains of adult albatross with a gut full of plastic

I have acknowledged some of the fatalities that the plastic bags can cause to the environment, but did you know that the average Australian, uses about three-million plastic bags every year. So, statistically speaking, the entire population of Australia, uses about sixty million bags all up!!

That's just some really scary numbers, isn't it?

But hey, I'm only a 16-year-old kid with a lot to say, but not a lot to do...Eheh...But hey, keep spreading the word, guys, and we will get there!!!!

Just want to share a website, so that more people can take an active role in saving earth.The website is:http://www.ReusableBagsGiveaway.com

You might be thinking about getting some reusable bags for awhile, but the fact that the convenience of free plastic bags really builds up a habit of hard to kick. Well, now you have no more reason to keep you from using reusable bags. As the website name said, you can get free reusable bags from them, the bags are not your normal boring looking reusable bags, they're like designer bags, very stylish and functional. I was kind of skeptical at first, but after I received my bags in less than week, I'm now a big believer, and happy to be playing my role in saving planet earth.

Your blog is soooo relevant and useful!! I also have a blog, but since I am Brazilian it is in Portuguese (sorry!), and I will post a new text about the UK awareness about the problem of using plastic bags! Of course, I will insert a link to your blog!

I hope that innitiatives such as blogs, help making people more aware of the problems plastic brings to the enviroment! Congrats!

Thanks for the article. We all surely need to Deplasticize our life and realise why we should not use plastic bags?I was shocked to know that these plastic bags kill more than 100,000 sea animals every year. That's really sad and there is a great need to make people aware of this fact.

We have been reading the articles on your website http://noplasticbags.blogspot.com/ and are very impressed with the quality of your information.

We have a team of copywriters who specialize in writing articles on various topics and would like to write an original article for you to use on your website – this article will not be used anywhere else on the Internet.

In exchange all we ask is that we can have one or two links within the body of the article back to one of our sites. If you are interested in having us write an article for your website please just let me know and we would be more than happy to have one written for you within two weeks.

Thanks for blogging about this issue. Something else that I found on the internet that deals with replacing plastic bags with eco-friendly ones is this video from the GreenopolisTV YouTube channel. Check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PNKD2dnmkk

It is very sad that the nature that we so much need is completely polluted with plastics and other chemical toxins.It is blogs like this which has to make the coming generations aware of the situation.Good job indeed.packaging solutions

This is a great way to lessen adidtional waste! We should have more acts on how to save the planet. I'm currently hooked to this environmentally themed social networking site. It allows me to track my eco firnedly acts and share it with others!

On behalf of the National Library Board (NLB), we would like to invite you to pledge your blog to the Singapore Memory Project as part of efforts to collect memories that are already manifested in existing online channels.

The Singapore Memory Project (SMP) is a national initiative to collect, preserve and provide access to Singapore’s knowledge materials. Spearheaded by NLB, the SMP aims to build a national collection of content in diverse formats (including print, audio and video), to preserve them in digital form, and make them available for discovery and research.

By pledging your blog to SMP, you are affirming that every memory matters. Whether your posts are an account of your daily life, or an expression of your thoughts, the SMP hopes to find a home for your memories so that it can help build towards an understanding of Singapore. You will also receive a badge that you can display on your blog in recognition of your contributions.

Contributors to this blog pledging initiative will be listed on Singapore Memory portal’s blog pledging webpage. All blogs pledged to SMP will archived using NLB’s web harvesting software, in addition to images of each blog’s landing page.

If you are keen to pledge your blog to SMP, simply fill up our response form at this following URL: http://singaporememory.simulation.com.sg/Public/Pledge.

You may find out more about this initiative at http://www.iremember.sg/?page_id=2822.

A compilation of news about campaigns around the world to eliminate single use plastic bags.
What's the simplest thing you can you do to save a sea turtle, stop the need for oil wars, preserve a river, protect our children's future? Bring a reusable bag to the store!

A compilation of news about campaigns around the world to eliminate single use plastic bags.
What's the simplest thing you can you do to save a sea turtle, stop the need for oil wars, preserve a river, protect our children's future? Bring a reusable bag to the store!